Hermann Weyl Quotes

• Besides language and music, it [mathematics] is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind, and it is the universal organ for world understanding through theoretical construction. Mathematics must therefore remain an essential element of the knowledge and abilities which we have to teach, of the culture we have to transmit, to the next generation.

  Hermann Weyl

  Teaching, Math, Creative

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty and perfection.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Science, Men

  Hermann Weyl (2015). “Symmetry”, p.5, Princeton University Press

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• Mathematics is not the rigid and rigidity-producing schema that the layman thinks it is; rather, in it we find ourselves at that meeting point of constraint and freedom that is the very essence of human nature.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Thinking, Essence

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• God exists because arithmetic is consistent - the Devil exists because we can't prove it!

  Hermann Weyl

  God, Faith, Hope

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• Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.

  Hermann Weyl

  Strong, Math, Practice

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• Not only in geometry, but to a still more astonishing degree in physics, has it become more and more evident that as soon as we have succeeded in unraveling fully the natural laws which govern reality, we find them to be expressible by mathematical relations of surprising simplicity and architectonic perfection. It seems to me to be one of the chief objects of mathematical instruction to develop the faculty of perceiving this simplicity and harmony.

  Hermann Weyl

  Beauty, Art, Reality

  Hermann Weyl (1950). “Space, Time, Matter”, p.23, Courier Corporation

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• In geometric and physical applications, it always turns out that a quantity is characterized not only by its tensor order, but also by symmetry.

  Hermann Weyl

  Order, Physics, Geometry

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• You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality.

  Hermann Weyl

  Reality, Long, Mathematics

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.70, Courier Corporation

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• We are not very pleased when we are forced to accept a mathematical truth by virtue of a complicated chain of formal conclusions and computations, which we traverse blindly, link by link, feeling our way by touch. We want first an overview of the aim and of the road; we want to understand the idea of the proof, the deeper context.

  Hermann Weyl

  Truth, Math, Ideas

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.33, Courier Corporation

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• The introduction of numbers as coordinates by reference to the particular division scheme of the open one-dimensional continuum is an act of violence whose only practical vindication is the special calculatory manageability of the ordinary number continuum with its four basic operations.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Numbers, Violence

  "Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science".

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• Besides language and music, mathematics is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Creative, Mind

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• Mathematics has been called the science of the infinite. Indeed, the mathematician invents finite constructions by which questions are decided that by their very nature refer to the infinite. This is his glory.

  Hermann Weyl

  Infinite, Glory, Construction

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight, brilliant and sharp, but cold.

  Hermann Weyl

  Quality, Brilliant, Cold

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.192, Courier Corporation

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• Before one can generalize, formalize, and axiomatize, there must be a mathematical substance.

  Hermann Weyl

  Substance, Mathematics, Mathematical

  "Mind and Nature: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics".

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• The constructs of the mathematical mind are at the same time free and necessary. The individual mathematician feels free to define his notions and set up his axioms as he pleases. But the question is will he get his fellow mathematician interested in the constructs of his imagination. We cannot help the feeling that certain mathematical structures which have evolved through the combined efforts of the mathematical community bear the stamp of a necessity not affected by the accidents of their historical birth.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Imagination, Effort

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• But it seems an irony of creation that man's mind knows how to handle things the better the farther removed they are from the center of his existence. Thus we are cleverest where knowledge matters least.

  Hermann Weyl

  Men, Mind, Matter

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.192, Courier Corporation

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• Our federal income tax law defines the tax y to be paid in terms of the income x; it does so in a clumsy enough way by pasting several linear functions together, each valid in another interval or bracket of income. An archeologist who, five thousand years from now, shall unearth some of our income tax returns together with relics of engineering works and mathematical books, will probably date them a couple of centuries earlier, certainly before Galileo and Vieta.

  Hermann Weyl

  Couple, Book, Math

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• The question for the ultimate foundations and the ultimate meaning of mathematics remains open; we do not know in which direction it will find its final solution nor even whether a final objective answer can be expected at all. "Mathematizing" may well be a creative activity of man, like language or music, of primary originality, whose historical decisions defy complete objective rationalization.

  Hermann Weyl

  Men, Discovery, Decision

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.88, Courier Corporation

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• A modern mathematical proof is not very different from a modern machine, or a modern test setup: the simple fundamental principles are hidden and almost invisible under a mass of technical details.

  Hermann Weyl

  Simple, Simplicity, Principles

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.33, Courier Corporation

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• The whole is always more, is more capable of a much greater variety of wave states, than the combination of its parts. ... In this very radical sense, quantum physics supports the doctrine that the whole is more than the combination of its parts.

  Hermann Weyl

  Support, Doctrine, Physics

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• ... numbers have neither substance, nor meaning, nor qualities. They are nothing but marks, and all that is in them we have put into them by the simple rule of straight succession.

  Hermann Weyl

  Simple, Numbers, Simplicity

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Riemanns geometrische Ideen, ihre Auswirkung und ihre Verknüpfung mit der Gruppentheorie”, p.44, Springer-Verlag

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• Our mathematics of the last few decades has wallowed in generalities and formalizations.

  Hermann Weyl

  Lasts, Mathematics, Decades

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• For mathematics, even to the logical forms in which it moves, is entirely dependent on the concept of natural number.

  Hermann Weyl

  Moving, Numbers, Natural

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• We must learn a new modesty. We have stormed the heavens, but succeeded only in building fog upon fog, a mist which will not support anybody who earnestly desires to stand upon it. What is valid seems so insignificant that it may be seriously doubted whether anlaysis is at all possible.

  Hermann Weyl

  Fog, Support, Heaven

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• Without the concepts, methods and results found and developed by previous generations right down to Greek antiquity one cannot understand either the aims or achievements of mathematics in the last 50 years. [Said in 1950]

  Hermann Weyl

  Years, Achievement, Greek

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